Ontario’s vehicle insurance a SNAFU

When it comes to auto insur- ance rates, Ontario is experiencing a typical SNAFU. Which, as we’re a family newspaper, we’ll spell out as “Situation Normal, All Fudged Up.”

This with news from the Financial Services Commission of Ontario that insurance rates — already the highest in Canada for the province’s 9.7 million drivers, who are among the safest in the country — are on the rise again.

Up 0.76 per cent on average in the second quarter of 2017, after rising 1.24 per cent in the first quarter.

In 2013, Premier Kathleen Wynne promised to cut insurance rates by 15 per cent by August, 2015.

When she failed to hit less than half that target, she said her 15 per cent pledge was a “stretch goal,” whatever that means.

What other Wynne promises, we wonder, are also “stretch goals”?

A recent study for Ontario’s finance ministry by David Marshall, former head of the Workplace Safety Insurance Board, found Ontario’s average auto insurance premium in 2015 was $1,458.

That was 24 per cent higher than Alberta, double the Quebec average and almost 55 per cent higher than the Canadian average of $930.

If Ontarians were paying the average cost of car insurance in Canada, they would save about $528 per vehicle annually, or almost 40 per cent of the $10 billion annually they now pay for insurance.

The auto insurance industry, as it has for decades, complains the main culprit in rising rates is consumer fraud.

But Marshall found the main problem is the province’s adversarial system for settling accident claims.

That results in about $1.4 billion annually, one-third of all insurance benefit payouts, going to duelling medical experts and lawyers in court, instead of to medical treatment for accident victims.

Even simple injuries, such as sprains and strains, which make up 80 per cent of claims, can take over a year to settle, while claims for catastrophic injuries can go on for years.

Victims’ rights groups have complained for years about auto insurers failing to honour their policies when people are injured in car accidents, fighting them in court instead, to deny them the benefits they paid for.

As for Ontario’s Liberal government, which has been in charge since 2003, it’s gone back to sleep on all these issues.

Yep: Situation Normal, All Fudged Up. — Postmedia News